


Mission successful?

by helpImlost



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, I gave Goddard HQ an AI, Kepler is Kepler, Mission Fic, but like in the dumbest way possible, team SI5 fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 03:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14824778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helpImlost/pseuds/helpImlost
Summary: Maxwell learns to never scheme with other people the hard way.





	Mission successful?

Maxwell waits for all of 4 seconds after Kepler passes her in the hallway before she turns around and slinks towards Kepler’s office. If being told off or the risk of being caught had ever stopped her she wouldn’t be where she was today, she thinks as she swipes the keycard and quickly gets into the room before closing the door behind her. 

 

Infiltration successful. 

 

She feels like a secret agent from one of those bad spy movies, opening and closing the drawers on her boss’ desk looking for the holy grail. Unfortunately it seems that Kepler is very good at guarding his secrets, all physical materials proving useless to her. She glances quickly at her phone. No message from Jacobi yet, which means she still got time. She eyes the computer on the desk. Is she willing to break into it. Then she remembers everything it took for her to get to this point and decides that yes, yes she is. Like hell she’ll give up now. They’ve worked too hard to stop now. She boots up the machine and cracks her knuckles in a way that she’s sure would be very cinematic and cool looking if anyone was there to actually see it. Which the resident AI probably did. But Hestia had promised not to tell on them. Well, promised as well as an AI bound by endless rules and regulations could promise anything. It’s fine Maxwell thinks, as long as nobody asks Hestia very direct and specific questions she and Jacobi are safe. Probably. Maxwell hadn’t spent long enough time with the in use Census units to know every detail or quirk in their programming, but Hestia seemed willing enough to cover for them.

 

The login screen appears and it takes Maxwell about 30 seconds to plug in her usb and have the password cracked. She begins her search, acutely aware that time is everything. She’d always been easily distracted though, even more so by computers and machines. By the time she thinks to check her phone again it’s blown up by messages from Jacobi. Maxwell feels all of her blood drain from her face in panic, she doesn’t even have time to open the messages or think of an escape plan when the door slams open and Kepler himself walks in. She curses herself internally for her lack of attention and is sure she looks like a deer caught in headlights, having been caught red handed snooping around in her boss’ office. Kepler however looks like the cat that just caught the biggest canary in the history of ever. Maxwell is doomed.

 

She catches a quick glimpse of Jacobi’s panicked gesturing behind Kepler before the door slams shut and Maxwell’s fate is sealed. This is where she’s going to die. If she knew this was going to be the end of her life she’d had spent more time telling her laptop how much she loved it even thought it was a piece of garbage. Oh how she’d love to have it in front of her now instead of her Judge, jury and executioner in one neat murderous package.

 

”Sir, I can explain-” She tries, because she’s allowed to do at least that, right?

 

Kepler crosses his arms and raises his eyebrow at her, a silent ’you get one and only one chance to explain yourself before I tear you into pieces and then feed said pieces to my cats.’

 

She knows that no matter what she does she’s done for, but she’ll be damned if she goes down alone. It had been Jacobi’s idea after all, and since Jacobi wasn’t in the room Maxwell suspects that Kepler doesn’t know of Mr. Troublemaker’s involvement yet. Maxwell can use that. If she can get Kepler’s attention away from her long enough she maybe has a chance to survive this without long lasting trauma. She takes a steadying breath and prepares for the battle that’s about to ensure.

 

”Sir, this is all Jacobi’s fault.”

  
  


To her credit Kepler actually looks taken aback by that statement for all of 0.001 seconds. Then he laughs. It’s the most messed up kind of laugh Maxwell has ever heard a person make and she’s still not sure if he just is like that or if he does it on purpose to freak people out. Then he stops laughing.

 

”All Jacobi’s fault huh? Let’s see what the man himself has to say about that, shall we?” He says before suddenly opening the door to his office. On the other side is Jacobi and Maxwell just knows he's been trying to eavesdrop from his posture and closeness to the door. A look of utter betrayal adorns his face as Kepler ’invites’ him in. Serves the bastard right, trying to put all the blame on her when this was all his fault to begin with.

 

Jacobi quickly steps in and stands basides Maxwell, him reaching to pinch her in the arm before the door once again slams shut and both of them jump to attention as Kepler stands in front of them. He looks from one of them to the other and Maxwell is waiting for the yelling to start and she should really start planning out her job hunting because if this doesn’t get them killed it at least is going to get them fired for sure.

 

Her spiraling thought process is interrupted when Kepler begins speaking.

 

”Mister Jacobi, Doctor Maxwell. Would either of you be so kind to explain to me what in the actual hell is going on here? Just so I know to which degree I need to punish you for what I’m sure are incredibly grave offences from they way the two of you are acting.”

 

Maxwell wishes Kepler would explain to her how exactly he does that thing with his voice and how he hasn’t killed people yet from talking that slowly. But they can’t all get what they want now do they? Before she can voice any of those rebellious thoughts though Jacobi cuts in.

 

”Sir, I assure you that I have no idea what is going on here either, and that I’m very curious as to why Maxwell seem to think I have anything to do with this.”

 

The slimy scummy little traitor. If they don’t die here Maxwell is going to kill Jacobi herself. With her bare hands. Preferably in a dark empty parking lot where nobody can hear him scream.

 

”Oh is that so? Maxwell assured me that this was in fact ’all your fault’, is that not correct?” He turns to her at the end of that sentence, the question clearly meant for her. He seemed to have patience today. Which is a good thing because Maxwell is done being a mouse. The fear is turning into a fight response and she’ll be damned if she goes down without swinging.

 

”Sir, I’m telling the truth and if Jacobi is too much of a coward to own up to his own stupid idea that he dragged me into then I will beat the honesty into him myself for you, Sir.”

 

”Hey! It’s not my fault that you didn’t read the warnings I sent you! We’d have totally gotten away with this if it wasn’t for you getting too chummy with his computer.”

 

”It wouldn’t have been a problem if you hadn’t been so useless at distracting Kepler!”

 

They’re turned to each other now and Maxwell is going to tear Jacobi a new one. She’s completely forgotten that Kepler is even in the room as she and Jacobi snipe at each other that she’s taken completely by surprise when she hears the sound of a, bag of chips? Opening. She trails off her sentence as she turns to look where Kepler is now sitting at his desk, happily munching on the salty snacks. Jacobi seem to be just as taken aback as he also stops talking to stare at their boss. Kepler notices that they’ve stopped fighting and straightens up slightly from his position, waving his left hand at them.

 

”Oh, please by all means ignore me and continue fighting, I want to see how far this is going to go. If you entertain me well enough I might even be nice and not skin both of you when this is over.”

 

The fact that he might still skin one of them isn’t exactly comforting to Maxwell. Besides, now that the argument got interrupted she’d kind of lost her steam. Though if Jacobi tries to pin this on her she will start the fight back up again. He is not getting away with this.

 

Jacobi seems to have similar thought in regards to her because he points at her when he replies to Kepler.

 

”Sir, I admit that this might’ve been an idea that I came up with, maybe, possibly, allegedly. But Maxwell is the reason we got caught so this should all really be on her for being a bad operative and partner in crime.”

 

How dare he.

 

Now Maxwell is the one pointing at Jacobi.

 

”Sir, If Jacobi hadn’t come up with this stupid idea we wouldn’t even be here in the first place!”

 

Kepler for one was looking like he was going to exclaim ’yes, entertain me peasants!’ at any moment. Now that she and Jacobi are quickly devolving form arguing into straight up just insulting each other. In Maxwell’s defence, that shirt really is awful and arguably a crime against humanity. And Jacobi really had no right to insult the fact that she wears fake glasses when he routinely refuses to wear his very real, very important for his eyes glasses.

 

Maxwell doesn’t keep the time but she’s surprised Kepler lets it go on for as long as it does. It’s reaching the point where she’s running out of insults and Jacobi looks like he’s about to start laughing about it. Then, finally, Kepler interrupts them. Maxwell is pretty sure it’s because he ate all the chips and got bored and not because they were bad at marathon arguing.

 

”Okay, that’s enough you two. Hestia, please tell me what Jacobi’s plan was that entailed Maxwell breaking into my office and my private computer.” He gives both of them a poisonous look at this and Maxwell is reminded that both her and Jacobi are at Kepler’s mercy, and that they’d been dancing to his pipe until this moment like absolute morons.

 

”Of course Warren! Jacobi wanted to find out what your real home address is, and enlisted Maxwell help him find out since it is not on public record!” The AI cheerily tells on them. Maxwell mouths the word ’traitor’ at her. But really, it was kind of their fault for scheming in a place where an AI can obviously hear you.

 

Kepler blinks once. Then he blinks again. Maxwell kind of wants to laugh at it. It was funny after all how much he seemed like a machine sometimes when he had trouble processing things. He seems to come to a decision pretty quickly after that thought because he looks at them in turn and then proceeds to do the first and last thing Maxwell expected him to do in this situation.

 

”Do either of you have plans for dinner tonight?” he asks. Maxwell’s first instinct is to say yes. Yes she does have plans and those plans involve being as far away from her angry boss as possible. Because he is angry. Not visibly but Maxwell has learned how to tell, the exaggerated cheeriness and that one tone of voice, the one where you know you’re screwed if you don’t obey. Where you’re one step away from a Kepler that yells so loudly you want to cover your ears and curl in on yourself. The moment when he gives you one chance to make amends before the explosion of rage happens.

 

And that's exactly what was happening right now. If they didn’t give him the right answer he was going to tear them to shreds for that attempted breach of privacy. So Maxwell swallows and resigns herself to take this peace offering and the balance act that will follow it until Kepler has decided that the issue isn’t worth his rage anymore.

 

”No sir.” She manages to get out. ”I got no plans at all sir.” She knows she’s following the right script when Kepler’s shoulders relax just that one fraction and he leans back in the chair before looking at Jacobi. ”How about you Mr. Jacobi? You got any dinner plans?”

 

Jacobi looks like he also want this to not be happening, but he too lets out a ’no, sir’. Kepler seems pleased with both of them. ”good, good. Why don’t both of you come have dinner over at my place?”

 

Maxwell sees it coming and she’s powerless to stop it. She now has to eat dinner at Kepler’s place. Jacobi looks way more excited by this than she does, immediately agreeing to it while Maxwell let’s out a very half hearted ’yes, sir’, resigning to her fate. She was definitely going to kick Jacobi’s ass after this is over. But for now she’s still walking on that thin line, so she lets Kepler ramble about how the last time he cooked dinner for anyone but himself he’d ended up saving the life of some royal person or whatever. She doesn’t even interrupt him like she usually does. Then he’s done and promptly kicks them out of his office after telling them to meet him in the garage at 6 pm. He graciously lets Maxwell unplug and take her usb with her, she waves sheepishly at him as she scampers out of the office.

 

Somehow she’d managed to survive that situation she thinks as she walks back to her work station. She makes sure to let Hestia know that she’s hurt by the AI’s betrayal and that she’s never going to let Hestia in on her schemes ever again. The AI seems genuinely sad about it for all of 5 seconds before telling Maxwell that she couldn’t exactly tell Warren no when he asked her to do something.

 

But what if she could? Maxwell ponders about AI’s ability to deny orders as she continues her work assignment pre Jacobi schemes. She’d have to look into that at some point. After she survives tonight’s dinner. In the end she guesses Jacobi’s mission had been a success, Maxwell just wishes she didn’t have to be collateral damage.

 

She comes to the conclusion that she’s never scheming with Jacobi again either.

**Author's Note:**

> Other people (like, actually good writers): write deep complex and realistic depictions of the team SI5 dynamic.  
> Me: fluff? shenanigans?? messed up found family??? bastards in cahoots???? absolute tinheads??????
> 
> (Also I haven't spellchecked or read through this at all)


End file.
